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- [Bill] I'm Bill Addison,
Eater's ever-roving National Critic.
When we were headed to Columbus, Ohio's State Capital,
locals in the know kept pointing us
to a massive market on the city's Northeast side.
Saraga International Grocery supports a few
small food counters and one of them, MO MO Ghar
has become a city-wide phenomenon.
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Chef Owner Phuntso Lama specializes in momos,
Tibetan dumplings.
There are only five seats along the counter
at MO MO Ghar, but it's worth the wait
for one of Columbus's most uplifting culinary treasures.
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- Momo is dumplings
in Tibetan language.
Momo to a Tibetan or a Nepali
it's an anytime food.
So you can eat that for breakfast,
for lunch, for dinner.
I love leftover momos.
'Cause next day we can have it for breakfast.
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- [Bill] The go-to this year is jhol momo.
Steamed momos stuffed with ground chicken, onions,
cilantro and other spices,
and served in a chili-laced broth.
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Or, try the Nepali momo with the spicy sauce
on the side that lets you really taste
the freshness of the chicken stuffed dumplings.
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For a vegetarian option, there's the Alu momos.
Pan-fried dumplings filled with a mild potato curry.
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- In addition to them being delicious,
they're really photogenic, so they've become
a real Instagram darling, and I think that's
kind of helped spread the word.
Momo got opened just over a year ago.
They opened in the summer of 2016.
And they've really become a sensation.
They are hand made.
They are made as they would be made at home with
home made wrappers, home made fillings,
and a lot of love put into making them.
I think one of the reasons why everything comes across
as so genuine and why it's so good,
is Phuntso is just making things the way
she would make them at home.
They open, they serve the Nepali food, they serve momos,
and they didn't change it.
MO MO Ghar really put momos on the landscape in Columbus
and everybody's heard of momos now because of MO MO Ghar.
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- My family had a restaurant in New York City
in the early 1990s.
And there we had to do everything.
So I got my little bit of restaurant experience there.
My cooking is home cooking.
When we cook momo at home,
it's usually a family event.
Everyone in the house will get involved.
I don't want to give them anything that's not natural.
I like to keep it really simple.
Simple, flavorful, and just good for your body.
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People seem to really love my momos
and I'm really happy about that.
Sometimes it feels unreal.
That's my momo and they're loving it,
and they are so happy.
I like my momo.
I don't want to say my momo's great, I don't want to say.
But folks of Columbus really just seem to enjoy it.
So I'm really happy about that.
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- [Bill] Brookes' reimagines the waffle
with things like sour dough
and zucchini bread as inspiration.
It's both familiar and startlingly original.